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Semi-automatic coffee machine strikes the perfect balance
By Tim Biggs
Pod machines and fully automated coffee makers are great, but it’s hard to beat the stuff extracted through beans that were freshly ground and tamped under a watchful eye in your own kitchen. Semi-automatic espresso machines have come a long way in recent years, with extra smarts helping them retain the benefits of a professionally made coffee without the risk that an untrained hand could create a caffeinated disaster. And Breville’s Oracle Dual Boiler is the best I’ve used yet.
The thing this machine gets so right is that it has all the capabilities of a commercial-level machine that a barista would use manually, but it also has the brains to operate itself. It knows how to avoid curdling soy milk, and when to tweak the grind. It will always hand you the reins if you think you know better, and can be operated almost entirely manually if you like. But while other machines I’ve used require you to have some training if you don’t want weak coffee and 7-Eleven foam, the Oracle gets you good results without your needing to have all the rules for coffee-making memorised. You might even learn something from it.
The booklet that comes with the Oracle is practically useless, which is not rare for appliances these days, although there is a comprehensive guide to regular maintenance that doubles as an ad for Breville’s various cleaning solutions. In this case, it turned out a booklet wasn’t needed because the big sharp touchscreen on the front of the Oracle does a great job of walking you through the set-up.
There’s a 2.3 litre water tank that loads in the back, but cleverly there’s also a hatch at the top of the machine that leads down into it, so no need to move the machine constantly. When you do need to, there’s a wheel you can lower so you don’t mess up your bench. It’s a compact but heavy unit, and it does look like a miniaturised version of a cafe espresso machine. It even has a spot on top to keep your cups, and they’ll get quite warm when you turn it on.
The machine connects to Wi-Fi and you can use an app to remotely power it on, which you will never do because it heats up and is ready to go in a minute and a half. Still, given there is a computer in there somewhere driving the machine, a Wi-Fi connection for updates seems sensible.
In manual mode, the screen becomes a pressure gauge, with buttons that let you tweak and activate the various functions.
Once it’s all put together, assuming you’ve left the machine on default settings, the coffee-making process is simple. You choose a drink from the menu, and the screen shows up to three icons representing the steps you need to take. So for a long black, it shows the grinder (put the portafilter in and tap; the beans are ground and tamped), the group head for extracting coffee, and a jug for adding hot water. It’s your choice whether to do water or coffee first, but it is a bit weird that Breville shows the water in third position when most Australian coffee snobs will tell you water first, then extract.
This may all sound very standard, aside from the touchscreen, animated icons and gentle sound effects, but the real cleverness is behind the scenes. Not only does the Oracle grind out the perfect measure of coffee every time, but it pays attention to the extraction too. On most machines this is your job, and it’s the hardest part to get used to if you’re not trained in coffee.
If the extraction is too quick the coffee will be weak, and if it’s too long it will be bitter, with the solution being to tweak the grind coarser or finer. The required setting will change depending on the condition of your beans, and things like temperature and humidity, so tweaks are necessary from time to time to get the extraction into the ideal window of 25 to 30 seconds.
As the Oracle extracts, a timer shows how long it takes. And if it’s outside the window, the grind is automatically adjusted for the next pull. This is all explained to you the first time, and an on-screen animation shows the adjustment whenever it happens. But the end result is the machine keeps an eye on it without you needing to do anything.
Milk frothing is another area where I was surprised by how much better the Oracle was than other semi-automatic machines I’ve used. The milk jug appears as an icon if you’ve chosen a milky drink, and a settings button below lets you choose the temperature and level of microfoam. But you can also choose an alternative milk type and the settings will change to suit. So while I’d previously held the jug and guessed the temperature by hand to avoid too-frothy dairy milk and ruined oat, I trusted the Oracle to do it on its own, and the results are very good. This machine has two separate boilers (hence the name) so you can froth milk and pull coffee at the same time. An on-screen progress bar shows the temperature of the milk, and once the target’s reached the steam stops. When you remove the jug, it purges automatically.
If you’re very particular, or the kind of machine-wary person that doesn’t like Google Maps suggesting alternate routes, you don’t have to listen to the Oracle. You can set your own grind or even turn off the auto-adjustment, and keeping the steam wand raised disables the automatic frothing to let you do it by hand. But you still get the advantage of easy coffee for everyone else in your household. Given it has a screen my kids immediately wanted to use the machine, and after a careful explanation about the dangers of hot water and steam my eight-year-old could handle it fine (with a little help needed to wrench out the stiff portafilter).
If you don’t like the machine’s recipes at all, you can swipe up from the bottom to find manual mode. Here the screen shows an imitation of an analogue pressure gauge, and all the buttons and settings you need to make whatever coffee drink you need. You can override the grind setting (which is usually calculated by volume) to grind for a specific amount of time instead, and you can brew manually instead of letting the machine pull a single or double. I don’t know why you would, but you can. You can even create a custom shot profile with the length of time you want and an optional blooming phase. Information like shot timing and milk temperature shows up on the screen even when you’re operating everything manually, which I like.
In fact, while I originally didn’t think I’d like having a screen on a coffee machine, its ability to explain what it’s doing or show tips on how to use each of the features is one of the nicest parts about it. The menu even has recipes for drinks like macchiatos and espresso martinis, which provide step-by-step instructions for the things you need to do away from the coffee machine itself. It makes settings easier too: for example, you can change the temperature of your coffee and hot water by the degree, instead of turning some knob somewhere until it feels right.
The $4500 cost is obviously the biggest downside here. Given what I pay for beans, milk and takeaways, you could argue the machine gets you a similar coffee to a local cafe, for almost $4 less per coffee (I am not factoring in electricity). At two coffees per day, and considering that you also have to maintain the machine, it could potentially pay for itself in two years.
But the truth is that there are an awful lot of options that have a lower upfront cost while still delivering pretty good coffee at home, and the Oracle feels like it’s targeting a fairly specific audience. Still, I can see households going for it if they have multiple coffee drinkers who demand high quality but lack barista skills, or who are interested in learning how to make coffee with the option for a machine to do it on its own along the way.
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